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Improving Prolog Programs: Refactoring for Prolog

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Book cover Logic Programming (ICLP 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3132))

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Abstract

Refactoring is an established technique from the OO-community to restructure code: it aims at improving software readability, maintainability and extensibility. Although refactoring is not tied to the OO-paradigm in particular, its ideas have not been applied to Logic Programming until now.

This paper applies the ideas of refactoring to Prolog programs. A catalogue is presented listing refactorings classified according to scope. Some of the refactorings have been adapted from the OO-paradigm, while others have been specifically designed for Prolog. Also the discrepancy between intended and operational semantics in Prolog is addressed by some of the refactorings.

In addition, ViPReSS, a semi-automatic refactoring browser, is discussed and the experience with applying ViPReSS to a large Prolog legacy system is reported. Our main conclusion is that refactoring is not only a viable technique in Prolog but also a rather desirable one.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, K.U. Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200A, B-3001, Heverlee, Belgium

    Tom Schrijvers

  2. Laboratory of Quality of Software (LaQuSo), T.U. Eindhoven, HG 5.91, Den Dolech 2, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Alexander Serebrenik

Authors
  1. Tom Schrijvers
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  2. Alexander Serebrenik
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

    Bart Demoen

  2. Department of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, USA

    Vladimir Lifschitz

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Schrijvers, T., Serebrenik, A. (2004). Improving Prolog Programs: Refactoring for Prolog. In: Demoen, B., Lifschitz, V. (eds) Logic Programming. ICLP 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3132. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27775-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27775-0_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22671-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-27775-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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